While many inmates engaged in individual resistance at a low level to derive its psychological advantages without accruing the disciplinary costs, only a relative few resisted regardless of the costs. Still fewer practiced this kind of resistance over long periods of time. Here the focus is on these persistent individual resisters, a small group of men who carried on prolonged battles with the staff and against the regime. These prisoners accumulated twenty, thirty, forty, or more misconduct reports each and spent not weeks or months but years in disciplinary segregation and solitary confinement cells. They paid for their determination not to go along with the program with years added to their stay on the island because of lost good time and significant postponements, or any serious consideration, of parole or conditional release. Their resistance took many forms—refusing to work and obey orders, fighting with other prisoners and with staff, and going on hunger strikes that if prolonged led to forced feeding.
